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Archive for the ‘religion’ Tag

The moon sets behind the Tetons as the Milky Way soars over Jackson Lake, Wyoming.

I have neglected this series for far too long, I’m sorry to say. Check out the previous posts for some background and for some of my best starscape images. Part I discusses how science has tackled the biggest questions we ask about the Universe and how life fits into the picture. Part II continues by touching on the idea of the universe having a consciousness, or even some sort of creator; it also discusses how quantum theory fits into things. Part III goes into what we know thus far about life’s origins. And Part IV highlights the incredible progress we’ve made in the exploration of our solar system, with the not always explicit goal of finding life on other planets.

The progress of this series has been generally outward, from our beloved Earth (which remains the only place we know that hosts life) and out to the solar system. My goal (at least metaphorically) is to go out to the stars, our galaxy, then finally the larger Universe. Then I’d like to come back to the original two-part question discussed in Part I: how did we come to be and why? In this post however, I’m going to take a short detour and speak about a scientist who greatly influenced how we have tackled these questions. He is Carl Sagan, an astronomer from the United States. Now passed away, he was widely known as a popularizer of astronomy. He influenced NASA policy along with millions of people who watched his Cosmos TV series. He had a significant effect on me.

While he was charismatic and very good at getting all sorts of people enthusiastic about space science, he was also a very good scientist. Among the general public in the U.S., he was mostly known for going on the Johnny Carson Show and expounding on astronomy. Of course everyone knew that Johnny would eventually get him to say the word “billions”. In Sagan’s landmark TV series Cosmos and in lectures, he often referred to billions (of stars, years, miles) with a definite, purposeful emphasis on the b. With his great voice, the b literally boomed. Comedians of the day had a great time imitating it.

Sagan started out as a planetary scientist, studying under the great Gerard Kuiper at University of Chicago and going on to make important contributions. For example, he put together observations from the early Venus probes to demonstrate that the reason our sister planet is an incredibly hot, dry place is that it suffers from a runaway greenhouse effect. He was first to suggest that Jupiter’s moon Europa has an enormous subsurface ocean and that Saturn’s moon Titan is bathed in an organic-rich atmosphere and had liquid organics on its surface. He was a key figure in several important NASA missions, including the Viking robotic mission to Mars. He led a small team that designed humanity’s first (and 2nd & 3rd as well) message to the stars.

Carl Sagan and Frank Drake came up with the idea to send messages to the stars on the Pioneer space probes. Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched in the early 1970s to pass close to Jupiter and Saturn and then head out of the solar system into outer space. These space-ready plaques, these cosmic messages in a bottle, had very simple messages inscribed on them. There was a map showing where our solar system was located, along with figures of male and female human beings waving a greeting. Five years later, the Voyager probes (which are now passing into interstellar space) carried a much more involved package. It included a gold-plated record of pictures plus sounds from Earth (music, frogs croaking, volcanic action, human greetings in many languages, etc.). This time capsule was designed by a team led by Sagan.

Also, in 1974, Carl Sagan and Frank Drake sent for the first time in human history a deliberate radio message out to the stars. Aimed at the enormous globular cluster in the constellation Hercules, it was a coded radio transmission sent from the huge Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico. It was not approved or sponsored by NASA, and drew great criticism. Some prominent astronomers complained that it was arrogant and stupid for Sagan to advertise our presence to potentially hostile aliens. Sagan countered that we have been broadcasting into space for generations, though the messages which continue to be broadcast (radio programs, TV sitcoms, etc.) may not be putting humanity’s best foot forward.

Wandering around Monument Valley during a full moon is a special experience.

SAGAN & ET

Carl Sagan believed deeply in both the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence and in the many benefits that contact with them would provide humanity. Do not misunderstand, however. He was not a believer in ancient aliens or even that UFOs were evidence that we are being visited in recent times. He simply believed that life had not only gotten started in many many places throughout the galaxy, but that it had progressed far beyond our level in a significant number of star systems. He believed that if we made contact with any aliens, it would be near certain that their technology and culture would be far more sophisticated than ours.

This makes perfect sense if you believe that the Drake Equation (which estimates the chances of extraterrestrial intelligence) strongly suggests there are very many instances of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy. Sagan combined that conclusion with the Fermi Paradox. In 1950, Enrico Fermi famously asked of his colleagues (including Edward Teller, the father of the hydrogen bomb) “where are they?” If there are so many potentially life-friendly star systems and literally billions of years to play with, why haven’t we seen any evidence of aliens, present or past? Sagan took these two factors, plus the fact that we are in the infancy of space exploration ourselves, and concluded that any civilizations which do exist have somehow avoided having destroyed themselves, and are thus greatly advanced both technologically and culturally.

The Lamar River Valley in Yellowstone National Park is a peaceful place at dusk.

He had faith that we would eventually make contact with an advanced intelligence. He also believed that their success in handling increasingly sophisticated, potentially destructive technology meant that they would be peaceful and non-aggressive. Further, he thought they could teach us how to avoid destroying ourselves through technology, wars or ecological collapse, and that this would be the greatest discovery in the history of humanity. This is why in the latter part of his career he focused intensively on making contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, and on convincing the general public that this was a worthwhile endeavor.

Some criticized this belief as not only quasi-religious, but as out-of-date and quasi-colonial. They thought Sagan’s beliefs smacked of the justification for imperial powers of the west conquering primitive peoples in order to provide them with the benefits of the modern world (all the while stealing their resources and infecting them with disease). In this cosmic case, those backward beings would be us Earthlings, and the “benevolent” conquerors would be extraterrestrials. Many people who think about this stuff believe that contact with aliens would bring a similar fate: exotic disease, theft of the Earth’s resources, and similar bad outcomes. I think this criticism of Sagan is unfair.

A full moon illuminates Ship Rock in New Mexico.

SAGAN & SETI

The movie Contact is based on Sagan’s book of the same name, where SETI’s Jill Tarter (played by Jodi Foster) makes first contact with aliens. SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), the effort that Frank Drake, Guiseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison started is now a very mature organization. Basically an effort to detect alien transmissions, SETI was kept alive during the 1960s by the Russians. Carl Sagan, during the Cold War, collaborated with the Russians on SETI. Now an American organization run by Seth Shostak, with both Frank Drake and Jill Tarter still involved, SETI is carried out by an international cast of scientists. They conduct highly sophisticated monitoring of our galactic neighborhood. Still looking primarily for alien radio transmissions, SETI incorporates sophisticated computer-assisted arrays of telescopes and also looks for optical signals (such as messages carried on laser beams).

SAGAN & MARS

Carl Sagan has been criticized for his almost religious zeal and optimism surrounding the existence of life on other planets. He was very adamant that cameras on the Viking Lander be capable of sweeping the area in case any intelligent creatures show up to check out the intruder. He endorsed a theory by the Russian Iosof Shklovsky which proposed that Phobos and Deimos (the two small moons of Mars) were artificial satellites created by Martians to escape a deteriorating climate on the planet’s surface. Regarding the controversial “face” on Mars, Sagan parted ways with mainstream astronomers when he supported further study of it. But he believed it was probably natural, a fact that was confirmed during subsequent flybys.

Sagan has been likened to that controversial icon of early 20th century Mars exploration, Percival Lowell. Lowell was the dogmatic scientist who was convinced up to his death that Mars was laced with canals. Sagan criticized Lowell for his refusal to accept evidence against the canal theory, but it is said secretly admired him for his belief in intelligent Martians. Lowell was a tireless promoter of the theory for an advanced Martian society and, at least in part, so was Carl Sagan. I think it’s a stretch, however, to label Sagan as Percival Lowell’s successor.

The full moon as viewed through a translucent veil formed by geothermal steam at Firehole Lake in Yellowstone National Park.

SAGAN THE SCIENTIST & AUTHOR

While it’s true that Carl Sagan had a strong belief in alien intelligence, possibly nearby, I regard him as a very good scientist, a straight thinker who could never ignore evidence that contradicted his beliefs. He famously said “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Although he though the study of UFOs was a legitimate effort, he debunked the famous alien abduction of d considered the chances of alien visitation to be extremely small. For years he taught a course at Cornell on critical thinking. But there’s no getting around the fact that Sagan’s interest in astronomy was stoked at an early age by the science fiction of H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Sagan was a well-trained astronomer who had a huge diversity of scientific interest and knowledge. I have read quite a few of his books, and they are diverse. Cosmos, The Pale Blue Dot, Cosmic Connection, Comet and Intelligent Life in the Universe are all great astronomy reads. But he also wrote The Dragons of Eden, which explores the evolution of human intelligence. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, about human evolution, is a fascinating book. He worked for some years with famous biologists and geneticists, including Harold Urey and H.J. Muller. He also worked with famous physicist George Gamow. In a book called Demon-Haunted World, he defends science as a way to counter the chaos and misery of totalitarianism and war, along with ignorance.

The starry sky on a clear evening is reflected in the aptly-named Reflection Lakes at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington.

SAGAN & FAITH

Sagan claimed that he was agnostic. Based on some of his statements (“The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing white beard is ludicrous.”) many considered him an atheist. But others thought he brought a religious bias into his science. He believed that “Not only is Science compatible with pirituality, it is a profound source of spirituality.” I believe he was somebody who welcomed that soaring elation that comes with scientific discovery, and that he regarded this as a deep spiritual experience with the nature of the universe, a sort of God. I don’t think he was an atheist. In fact, he once said:

An atheist is someone who is certain that God does not exist, someone who has compelling evidence against the existence of God. I know of no such compelling evidence. Because God can be relegated to remote times and places and to ultimate causes, we would have to know a great deal more about the universe than we do now to be sure that no such God exists. To be certain of the existence of God and to be certain of the nonexistence of God seem to me to be the confident extremes in a subject so riddled with doubt and uncertainty as to inspire very little confidence indeed.

In eastern Washington state stands a replica of Stonehenge, here viewed just before complete darkness descends with the stars coming out.

Sagan was in some ways a child of the 1960s. He was strictly anti-war, a staunch environmentalist, a believer in a woman’s right to equality and access to birth control (including abortion). He smoked marijuana, and did little to hide the fact. He married three very talented, intelligent and strong women throughout his life. I believe Sagan’s most important legacy is what he did to make astronomy (and science in general) understandable and exciting to the public. Sagan really believed science was a spiritual quest, but not in the strictly religious sense in which the word spirituality is often used. Many people think his belief in extraterrestrial intelligence had strong religious elements. But I think that he simply wasn’t conflicted about his science, and that he really was agnostic. I believe that many of his critics mistook his spiritual-like enthusiasm (especially evident when he talked to the public about science) for some sort of religiosity.

Carl Sagan died in 1996 from pneumonia (of all things). It was related to a disease he had called MDS, a condition that destroys a person’s bone marrow. He was only 62, with plenty more to contribute to science and society. Among many scientists and science enthusiasts, and nearly all science educators, he is sorely missed. The movie Contact, an adaptation of his novel, came out in 1998. If we do make contact with intelligent aliens within what would have been his natural lifetime (to the late 2020s, say), it will be a true shame he did not live to see it.

An old abandoned schoolhouse out on the Oregon prairie is illuminated by a crescent moon. The Milky Way glows pink in the coming dawn.

At one time I thought God created everything, but I can’t remember ever truly believing it was during 6 very busy days. I do remember giving serious consideration to whether or not Purgatory would be an interesting place to stop before going to Heaven, even if there was a small chance I could be sent instead to Hell by mistake. Then soon after I seriously began studying science, I put my inner religious beliefs into a little box and went on, unencumbered, to feed my curiosity. I didn’t throw my beliefs away. I believe that as you go through life, you should try not to throw things away unless you really need to. We already lose too much as we grow older.

Buddhists create a spiritual atmosphere with these: Laos.

I learned that it’s likely life emerged from non-life by a trick of chemistry, and that was that. I had bigger fish to fry – how the Earth and other planets formed. I knew scientists didn’t really know exactly how life began, but I figured they would find out soon enough. It wasn’t for me an important question for a long time.

(An aside: I sometimes wonder whether I would have become obsessed with life’s origins, had I went further in the direction I explored my senior year in college. I was good at chemistry in college, and I took a class called Thermodynamic Geochemistry, which sounds a lot tougher than it actually was – but it would have gotten very tough if I had pursued it.)

Probably the world’s oldest religion: Judaism.

Meanwhile, for the scientists who work on it, the origin of life has been an unusually thorny problem. There have been many side-tracks along the way, from primordial soup to deep sea vents to extra-terrestrial origins (panspermia).

Earth was a barren place before life, and water only appeared in mirages (if anyone were there to see them).

One of the first environments thought to be the cradle of life: shallows of the sea.

The State of Our Knowledge of Life’s Origin

We don’t really know what kind of environment hosted the first life. It could have been in a thermal area, or in ice, or even in solid rock. It could have been on Mars. But wherever it was, water very likely was the dominant substance surrounding the primitive beings.

The clear pools at Semuc Champey in the Guatemalan highlands invite a cooling swim.

Perhaps a non-living compound underwent some chemical transformation into RNA. RNA can do the work of forming proteins (as it’s doing right now inside you) but it can also reproduce, like DNA. Then it’s just a matter of finding itself in the right place at the right time (pre-cells), to be put to work in an entirely novel way in something we would now call alive.

Clay is thought to be a likely place for pre-living chemistry to have taken place.

Or perhaps non-living structures similar to our body’s cells first started to form in high-energy environments (like deep sea vents) and they began to process energy (it’s thermodynamically favorable). Then they began to reproduce (via RNA). Most scientists believe that RNA is an important key.

Life was born because chemical compounds formed at great odds. Salt crystals form naturally when pools evaporate in the desert.

Perhaps you know of Craig Venter. He’s the guy who led the team who first decoded the human genome. He’s at work now on trying to create a living organism with no biological parents (actually a computer takes the parents’ place). Many believe that creating life ourselves is necessary before we can understand how it arose. As Richard Feynman once said, “What I cannot create, I do not understand”.

Active volcanoes (this one in Indonesia) could have easily provided a spark for the origin of life.

You can see there is some uncertainty here, and every good chemist knows these transformations are not at all easy. But it happened. Stuff happens after all, and given a lot of time and the right environment, perhaps life has been emerging everywhere, throughout the history of the universe. So what if we can’t explain the moment of life’s creation. Does it matter?

Did life come from another planet to seed Earth’s lifeless oceans?

I tend to think that life in this solar system evolved on Earth first, but I wouldn’t bee too surprised if it started on Mars first and was transported to Earth riding on a meteor. I also believe that this question: how did life start, is an important one. I think it will take us a big step forward in figuring out how life emerged in the universe. How we got here is one thing, but it will take much more insight to discover why we are here.

I’m taking a break from my usual photography/travel blog to put down some thoughts on this conflict. Ever since science came to the fore during the Renaissance, the two ways of making sense of our world have been engaged in a running battle. Granted nearly all scientists and a great majority of the faithful don’t pay any attention to it at all. But a good number of the world’s religions and (despite their denials) some scientists continue to be rankled by the other’s views.

By the way, enjoy the pictures. I am giving a break to viewers and if you can manage to download copies to your computer, go right ahead. But please do not use them for any other than personal use (wallpaper is good). They are copyrighted, so please do not use them in advertising, your website, etc. This goes for these pictures only. Clicking on those in other posts on this blog will take you to my website where purchase can be easily made. Thanks for your cooperation and interest!

Early morning in the Botswana veld, as clouds begin to gather in preparation for the rains. The end of drought was (and still is) placed in the hands of God.

Some would say that science vs. religion is a straw man issue, that it points to flawed thinking even to consider the two as rivals. There are also some who think the argument is over, that science has successfully separated itself from the question, and that most religions have reconciled science with their faith. There is some truth to this, but by no means is the conflict over with. Strangely enough, the controversy surrounding climate change has stoked the argument, and of course the argument over evolution and its teaching continues to elicit raw emotions on both sides.

Many people don’t realize how religion got its start. Also, most don’t realize how science was practiced in relative obscurity for centuries before it ever attained enough power and influence to give religious leaders cause for concern. But as soon as science became important, as soon as it was able to be distributed to a wide segment of the populace, religious hierarchies were threatened. The history of this conflict points to how inevitable it was for the two camps to fight, and how difficult it will be to resolve the conflict in future.

Religion at its origins was most likely a way to make sense of the vagaries of nature: crop failure and devastating storms, premature death and sudden, unexplained sickness. Science at its beginnings was a way of thinking that relies on observation, inference and deduction to rationally explain the world around us. Even though religion has matured greatly over the centuries, bifurcating many times, it remains at its core a way for people to take comfort in the face of adversity, to have faith that God(s) or a spiritual equivalent is behind the making of the Universe. Science is much younger, having gotten a false start with the ancient Greeks, then only expanding during the Renaissance. But in recent times science has become much more influential, explaining the Universe at ever earlier times, almost to the very instant of its origin. It remains a way for us to explain nature.

A storm breaks up over the Absaroka Mountains of Montana.

Although most scientists maintain that the two should never be thought of as competitors, I think they essentially tackle the same questions. Science does go about it in a wholly different way than does religion, often trying to answer small questions that would never concern a spiritual person. But those small questions, it should be clear to anyone by now, lead to the big ones: Where do we come from? How was all of this created? What is the destiny of the world? Religion for a long time was convinced that science would never get close to answering the ultimate questions, but it is very clear now that science is rapidly heading in the direction of answering all or nearly all of the fundamental questions.

The battle has essentially been won by science. Big decisions in the power centers of the world are no longer influenced to a large extent by religious leaders (there are some exceptions). Meanwhile science drives technology, which in turn drives the advance of humanity into its future. For example, evolution is regarded by most educated people as the only real explanation for the existence of all life, including us. Those in the Bible Belt and in other regions around the world would not agree with this statement, but they are “drinking the koolaid” as it’s said. Whenever the question gets to the courts, it is proven beyond doubt that among the powers to be science wins the day. Polls consistently show that most people agree with those court decisions.

Because science has gained the upper hand in recent times, there are many scientists who now wish to disavow the reality of the conflict. They naturally wish to minimize the religious point of view. They want to get back to business, which is understandable. Science is difficult enough to practice without distractions like defending it against fundamentalists. It requires undistracted attention for an entire career. Stephen Jay Gould complained on numerous occasions that he had wasted too much time defending evolution. But being an eloquent man, he was constantly called upon (and he felt an obligation) to do so. Tragically, he died too young, proving his point that scientific careers are much too short. But among millions of those who have a fundamentalist bias in their faith (again, understandable) the conflict is by no means over. They believe, rightly I think, that their way of explaining the basic questions of existence to their countless followers is threatened by the rise of science and rationality.

This argument is not going away, even though I think it will take long breaks where the media ignores it. At their cores, religion and science continue to explain the fundamental questions. They continue to go about answering them with radically different ways of thinking – science with what’s called the scientific method (even though most of us don’t understand what that really is) and religion with moral-based faith. Of course, many would argue that religion focuses on guidelines for living while science has taken over the business of explaining nature, and this is a relevant point when speaking of SOME religions.

Prayer flags fly in Nepal. Although Buddhism does not rely on a creator, it does attempt to explain the suffering of humanity.

By and large, however, religion still attempts to explain those questions that we begin to ask as children. It has to if it is to have any sway over people’s lives. It’s about power over people’s lives, and I say that with no judgment regarding their motivations (I am willing to give religion the benefit of the doubt, i.e. their hearts are in the right place). With science as well, they are convinced that science is the “real” way to explain nature, whereas religion is out of its element when explaining the world. Religion, in other words, should stick to teaching children the difference between good and evil and leave the ultimate questions to them. This I think is a naive way of looking at things.

I believe it would be much more honest for scientists to admit that their way of explaining the world has gained the upper hand in modern times, and that, as a result, religion has a reduced role in that realm. Perhaps they would be less upset and frustrated when religion comes at them wanting a fight. Perhaps they would stop accusing the faithful of muddled thinking on the issue. All it would take, I think, for a rational scientist to understand things better, is for him or her to look into the very earliest origins of religion. It is, after all, a science (archaeology) that has provided knowledge of those distant origins in the Middle East.

I do not see any good way of resolving faith and religion. It seems a bit unsatisfying to me, as a scientist, to simply say that they are two different ways of thinking. Maybe I’m too simple. I feel that you either answer the ultimate questions or you don’t. How can we have two different ways of answering them, with correspondingly different answers? One has to be right and the other wrong.

Perhaps I should be happy, like many religious scientists, to relegate religion to being a guide for living while science explains the Universe. But I can’t do that without feeling a little guilty. I don’t like to disrespect another’s viewpoint. I also don’t resent religion as many people seem to. I accept the arguments on both sides, but as a scientist I know which side I will always come down on.

Maybe someday the fight will be over. It certainly should not be carried into issues like climate change, which really don’t have anything to do with religion or faith. But if I were a fundamentalist Christian, I don’t think I could swallow evolution hook, line and sinker. I hope scientists will stop and think about the issue as deeply as they think about scientific problems. I don’t like them piling on. While Catholicism has largely pulled out of the fight, many religions have not. So we are sure to see more acrimony in the future. At the very least, we should never make it personal, never make it about the person. All of us are merely children looking out at all the wondrous things around us with wide eyes. Asking questions.

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A photo & travel blog with a difference: Instead of strict focus on photo how-to, gear and the like, I'll pass on knowledge about the places and cultures photographed. I believe the more deeply you come to know a place, the better your pictures will be.

My past careers as science teacher and geologist mean that I can't help but teach about the natural history of photogenic places around the world. But photography is not forgotten. You'll also see practical tips about where and how to photograph the destinations. And once a week, Friday Foto Talk gives photography tips and how-to on a selected topic, for novices on up to expert.

What you won't find here is endless discussion about me braving dangerous weather, terrain or wild animals to get the shot. Nor will there be cheerleading gear talk or marketing pitches. I promise to leave that to other blogs, of which there are many.

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